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“At Disruptive Technology we are constantly introducing new ideas, and we are taking them to market better, & faster than the competition. We rely on DISTRiX to manage our supply chain and we are delighted with the visibility and control it provides us. It certainly helps us to be innovative.”
Tim Dabbs, Disruptive Technology
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White Papers > Are you struggling to grow your business?
I’ll bet that if you were asked to write a new 5 year business plan the MDs amongst you would use words like turnover and profit. Financial Directors would use ROI and cutting costs. Operations Directors would use workload but more efficiently. The Sales Director wants greater opportunity, more first dates; whilst the Marketing Director is focused on creating demand. IT Directors want more efficient systems and more people! All designed to help growth but in their own way very different and regularly in conflict.
What about those small medium businesses where these jobs are taken by one or two people only, new growing businesses where the key decision-makers have many hats, where one person is responsible for conflicting spend requirements. For example the conflict between spending money on branding or on cold calling, both if done effectively will grow your business, but if not simply waste money and take profit off your bottom line.
This short article cannot hope to answer the headline question about growth, instead it offers a few ideas to stimulate your thoughts and invite you to contact the author for further discussion.
I have to assume most readers will understand the 7 Ps of the marketing mix – Wikipedia will help if not, and trust you are using this model to demonstrate value or the competitive edge of your products and services. I also assume most readers will know how to best sell their own products and services; so growing a business is easy isn’t it? Well no, businesses go out of business in droves, there are web sites on it and there’s a growing industry either to help failing businesses or exploit the opportunity.
So we are agreed that growing a business is difficult; in truth it is both an art and a science. This article touches on both. It is an art form to differentiate yourself from your competitors, but differentiate you must, being the cheapest does work for a little while, but put on your FD hat and what you will see is increasing revenues and lower margins. It might be that keeping your money in the bank is more profitable. Differentiation comes from providing value and this is a constantly moving target as your competitors catch up and offer the same functions / differentiators. An excellent tip is to conduct market research on the benefits (not features) your competitors offer, compare them with your own and then set about determining how your products and services are better. Once you know – sing them from the rooftop, or probably better in your market material, your email shots, your web pages and every time you contact a prospective customer. It’s not a problem, we all want to be convinced we are getting value for money; your customers will welcome it.
Another art form is how to identify pain, not back pain, rather the perceived business pain your next customer is experiencing. If you could magically diagnose their pain, then you could solve it as quickly – couldn’t you? The trouble is your patient or rather your next customer is surrounded by solutions (unless you are very lucky with a truly unique solution) and he normally doesn’t like discussing his pain with all and sundry. He or she is a busy person, inundated by cold calls, cold emails and equally cold flyers (mail shots). The art form is to make contact with these people, understand their pain, empathise with them and demonstrate that you can solve their problems for them.
Finally the science, use IT to provide your competitive advantage. Are you still working on paper, is there a seamless link from sales, to distribution to after-sales services. Do you have an effective prospect database that you can call; do you link catalogue sales, to web sales, to telesales effectively. If you don’t you should, if you cannot afford it in one go the find a solution that is both modular and is revenue based, pay as you go. If you cannot find this, then contact the author.
Chris Wright, DISTRiX, 01494 470496, chris.wright@distrix.com
DISTRiX specialise in delivering and supporting key business software solutions for sales, distribution and mobile workers. Solutions are modular and will facilitate and accelerate growth, customer care and control.
Typical examples are businesses who import or manufacture their own products, add value, distribute and subsequently support through life. Companies like Pentax, Disruptive, M&P motor bike spare parts have successfully implemented DISTRiX and grown their business.
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